The real future apocalypse won't be zombies or nukes — it'll be water wars, according to Shekhar Kapur, director of Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. His new movie Paani takes place during a future battle over access to water.

According to Kapur, Paani takes place in a future Mumbai. And it's "a love story based in a City where the Water Wars have broken out between those that have Water and those that do not. At a time when Water has become a weapon of social and economic control." (And the IMDB page summary makes it sound like a Romeo and Juliet-type deal, with a poor boy falling in love with "the one girl he can't have.")

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Kapur's been blogging about his creative process on the film, and his belief that global warming will cause fights over access to clean water to intensify. Here's a video he linked to, the trailer for a documentary about the water wars:

This film has been in the pipeline (no pun intended) for several years now, and was stalled out due to money concerns. But Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle signed on as a producer last summer, and now Lord Of The Rings' Barrie Osbourne and Deepak Chopra are also on board to produce. Academy Award winner A.R. Rahman will provide the music, and Jill Bilcock (Moulin Rouge) is the editor. So far the only castmember announced is Vivek Oberoi, who's probably playing the main character.

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This isn't Kapur's first foray into science fiction — he has had a time-travel movie in the works for well over a decade. And of course, he started out his career directing the Indian superhero classic, Mr. India. Here's my favorite scene, where we journey into the lair of the supervillain Mogambo: